Home(less) Run

After seven years on the road, playing on the promenades of the Côte d’Azur and busking their way around Europe’s boulevards, The Les Clöchards have finally crawled from the gutter to the stage and made their way to Edinburgh’s Bosco Theatre. 

Except, of course, that it’s not really true – well, not all of it. But you didn’t really believe that over the top description, did you? The Les Clöchards—and yes, the melding of English, French and German in their name is intentional—are five German jazz musicians who discovered their Corsican hobo alter egos on the streets of southern France.

"We’re not really lying when we say that we lived and played on the streets, because that’s how it all started out,’ explains the band’s saxophonist Axel Müller. "The five of us took a caravan to the Côte d’Azur and we ended up playing there for about two years – we needed to earn some money. So we really smelled what it was like to be street musicians."

And the pungent aromas and gritty realities of life on the street came to define the group’s unusual performing style, with their mucky faces and threadbare clothes, and lots of backchat with the audience. "What we do is a freaky entertainment show," says Müller. "We’re really close to the audience, and we break the boundaries between them and us. But what our singer does is total anti-tainment – he disses people from the stage, tells stupid jokes, drinks. But I think that’s one of the reasons why people like us."

The band plays everything from the classics of the 1960s through to tracks you might rather forget. "If we don’t like the song or the performers," explains Müller, "we try to put it into a different style, make fun of it. For example, Roxette’s 'The Look' – that song is cheesy 1980s pop, absolutely forbidden, and nobody would dare to perform it seriously, so we turn it into an up-tempo country direction." The result is funny but also clever, mercilessly sending up the track but at the same time revealing how much better it sounds in a completely different musical guise that’s a world away from big hair and dodgy synths.

It’s not all mickey-taking, though, as Müller points out: "We also really honour some songs or artists, in which case we don’t want to make fun of them." Madonna’s 'Like a Virgin' gets a surprising transformation into a sultry, gospel tinged ballad, and although The Les Clöchards’ take on Peter Gabriel’s 'Sledgehammer' stays pretty faithful to the original, that in itself is quite an achievement given the band’s grubby array of battered junkyard instruments. But that’s all part of their hobo aesthetic.

"We’ve got a metal guitar that cost €150, and it’s been broken several times – it’s the same guitar we’ve used since we were playing on the streets," says Müller. "And we’ve got an old double bass with a few holes in its sides, and my grandma’s 1960s analogue organ, which breaks down all the time." The drummer uses a conga case as his bass drum, and as well as sax, Müller plays melodica – "like a small, blowable piano." With such an eclectic collection of broken down stuff, it’s amazing that they can make their songs sound so good – and they even mix in Chinese, Brazilian and Afghan instruments they’ve picked up on their travels.

Not surprisingly, Müller believes they have a broad appeal: "What we do works for a wide audience, from teens to 60s – we play festivals and rock shows with people dancing and having a party, but we also play cabaret shows with seated audiences. But people don’t need to be jumping around to make it a good show. We just want to have fun with the audience."

And fun it certainly is. But you’d better expect to get involved at The Les Clöchards’s Fringe show – whether it’s getting up on your feet to dance or suddenly finding yourself talking to one of the group. If you’re heading for the front row, make sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for.

For some that’s a nightmare. But has Müller ever found people with a burning desire to get involved? "Just last weekend three women came up to the stage and threw five leopard print thongs on stage for us. They’d probably seen the show before, because they wanted us to use them at the end." He’ll reveal no more. So if you want to discover how those sexy undies might have been employed, you’ll just have to see the show.